Now that I have more than five minutes/the initial shock of getting my tattoo is over, I want to take a few minutes to write about the experience and the reasoning behind my tattoo. My story.
My story starts in May 2007, at the death of my Great-Grandpa. I was sixteen, and it was my first loss. He was like my father, I can barely remember a day that would go by that I wouldn’t be at his house. From the time I was a little girl, he would always spoil me rotten. And I never got too big to sit on his lap. He was someone I admired, and someone I never saw myself losing. Then one day, he was gone. It wasn’t as though we’d seen it coming. It was a freak accident. It happened when he was mowing the grass out at his church. He’d gotten too close to a ditch and he fell and died instantly. And it was the first time I can honestly say that my heart had broken. My whole world had fallen apart.
The day after he died, my best friend Ruth texted me. The words were simple, and I didn’t know that they’d change my life: “I’m sorry that in your condition the sunshine’s been missing but don’t believe that it isn’t there. This world can be ugly, but isn’t it beautiful?” And yeah, I’d been a Jack’s Mannequin fan before that, but that wasn’t a song that I’d heard before. And I looked up Katie. All I could find was the chorus, but even with just that, it was slowly becoming my favorite song. Those were the words that I kept close to my heart as we buried my great-grandpa. As my mom pulled further away from me to be there emotionally and physically for my great-grandma.
I spent the following year in a blur of depression. I threw myself into friendships that were bad for me. And then, at the beginning of the next summer, I became reacquainted with two people who would change my life. I’d known Malissie and Dennis since my freshman year of high school, but we were never that close. But we bonded, and before I knew it they’d practically taken me in. I found myself pouring my heart to them. About five years of cutting and battling depression, something that had only amplified since my great-grandfather had passed away. And they became the people that were there for me at every moment.
A couple of days after the two of them rushed to my house at 2am to stop me from cutting, I asked Malissie to drive me to the hospital. I was either checking myself in or I was going to die. It was that bad. Both Malissie and Dennis and a friend of ours, Brandi, held my hands that night as I went through checking myself into a hospital.
The following eight days were the most difficult, magnificent days of my life. I started to figure out who I was, and the real reason behind all of my sadness. I’d tried so hard to cover up how sad I was because my great-grandpa died. I found myself smiling again. Laughing again. They would ask me if I wanted to hurt myself, and for the first time in five years, I was able to say no and mean it. I would talk to my mom when she would come to see me, and I would be completely honest with her.
After I got out, things were relatively okay. I got my drivers license. I became a senior in high school. I wasn’t sad all the time. I started my fall in October, when a friend of mine was forced away from me for a month. Around that time, I’d finally pulled out Jack’s Mannequin’s The Glass Passenger, and it became my soundtrack. I got particularly stuck on Swim. Something about the words got to me, but the first time I really heard it, I was driving home from my friends house, and I just pulled over and I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. But then in December, I slipped. I cut for the first time since I’d been out of the hospital. And I’d never been more disappointed in myself. But I didn’t slip back into depression, I picked myself up and I kept going. Until April.
On April 23rd, 2009, I cut. Six or seven lines across my thigh. And I cried. And I hurt. And for the first time, I hated it. I hated the blades and the cuts more than I hated myself. And that was the first time I felt like I’d made progress. After I’d stopped crying that night, I picked up every blade I had and I got rid of them. I was done. I didn’t know if I would manage to quit, but I had nothing but faith.
I’m not sure when the idea first popped into my head, but one day I listened to Swim again. Really listened to it. And the line “The whole world is watching, you haven’t come this far to fall off the earth” stuck in my head. And I fell in love with that song. With that line. Because, while that song means something for everyone, that line had special meaning. I have come so far. I’ve battled with depression and loss and self-injury for years, and I’m still alive. I still have a heartbeat.
It was sometime in the middle of my first semester of college that I decided that I’d get swim for my first tattoo. Right on my wrist. But I wouldn’t just get it for anything. It would be a reward. It would be the celebration. Of me. Of one year without self injury. Of who I am and who I have been. Who I will be. My self-injury was a part of me, and while the physical scars will fade, I never want the memories to. I am so incredibly strong, and I don’t want to forget that.
I settled on my design right before Easter. It would be in the Jack’s Mannequin font. In lowercase. With the asterisk right above the ‘i’ instead of the dot. And when I showed it to my grandma and the rest of my dad’s side of the family, they all cried. They all hugged and congratulated me for this accomplishment.
On April 23rd, I woke up with my stomach in my lungs. I was nervous. Excited. A long list of emotions that contradicted each other in reality, but inside my body they just made me feel as though I was going to throw up all day. But I was proud, because I’d made it. 365 days had gone by without a single cut on my wrist. And those days hadn’t been easy, they’d been full of heartache and sadness and I’d done it. I did it. So that night, I found myself at Living Canvas, my wrist stretched out in front of me while they put the stencil on. My roommate was by my side, my camera in her hands. And it hurt. More than I’d anticipated it to hurt, but different than I’d anticipated too.
And then it was over. And I’d looked down at my tattoo and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Here it was, the physical proof of my triumph. But it was so much more than that. It meant the end of an era. The end of me as a cutter, as a self-injurer. The end of the phase in my life where I sought out pain to make myself feel better. And I cried as I walked home, I cried because of what I’ve gone through. But I know what I can do. I know what I can pull through. I just have to keep swimming. Even when I don’t think I’ll make it through the day, just keep going and it’ll be alright.
